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The Heather Blazing
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The Heather Blazing Paperback - 1994

by Colm Toibin

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Summary

The sea is slowly eating into the land and the hill with the old watchtower has completely disappeared. The nearest house has crumbled and fallen into the sea. It is Ireland in the late twentieth century.

Eamon Redmond is a judge in the Irish High Court. Obsessed all his life by the letter and spirit of the law, he is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Toibin reconstructs the history of Eamon's relationships—with his father, his first "girl," his wife, and the children who barely know him. He gives us a family as minutely realized as any of John McGahern's, and he writes about Eamon's affection for the landscape of his childhood on the east coast of Ireland with such skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel that ensnares us with its emotional intensity and dazzles with its crystalline prose. In The Heather Blazing, Colm Toibin displays once again the gifts that illuminated The South, a book described by Don DeLillo as "a grand achievement," and by John Banville as "a daring imaginative feat...a splendid first novel."

Reader reviews for The Heather Blazing

From the publisher

The sea is slowly eating into the land and the hill with the old watchtower has completely disappeared. The nearest house has crumbled and fallen into the sea. It is Ireland in the late twentieth century.

Eamon Redmond is a judge in the Irish High Court. Obsessed all his life by the letter and spirit of the law, he is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Toibin reconstructs the history of Eamon's relationships--with his father, his first "girl," his wife, and the children who barely know him. He gives us a family as minutely realized as any of John McGahern's, and he writes about Eamon's affection for the landscape of his childhood on the east coast of Ireland with such skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel that ensnares us with its emotional intensity and dazzles with its crystalline prose. In The Heather Blazing, Colm Toibin displays once again the gifts that illuminated The South, a book described by Don DeLillo as "a grand achievement," and by John Banville as "a daring imaginative feat...a splendid first novel."

Details

  • Title The Heather Blazing
  • Author Colm Toibin
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition unknown
  • Pages 256
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Group, New York, New York, U.S.A.
  • Publication date 1994-03-01
  • ISBN 9780140175325 / 0140175326
  • Weight 0.48 lbs (0.22 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.73 x 5.07 x 0.71 in (19.63 x 12.88 x 1.80 cm)
  • Age range 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Category Fiction - General
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

About the author

Colm Toibin was born in Ireland and lives in Dublin. He is one of Ireland's best known journalists. He is the author of The South, winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Prize. In 1995, he was awarded the Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Prize. He is also the author of The Heather Blazing and The Story of the Night.